Bring Me To Life
by KeepTheFaith
Summary: Complete - Spike’s POV season 7, before LMPTM, answer to a songfic challenge at Inamorati to Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life”


Title: Bring Me To Life

By: KeepTheFaith (Laura)

Feedback: Is what I live and write for, leave it here or send it to aeryncrichton@hotmail.com

Links: If you want it, just let me know

Disclaimer: Buffy belongs to Joss Whedon and ME

Pairings: Buffy / Spike

Subject: Complete - Spike's POV season 7, before LMPTM, answer to a songfic challenge at Inamorati to Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life"

Rating: PG-13

Bring Me To Life

Ever since Buffy brought me out of the basement of Sunnyhell High School, I've been waiting... I've been watching, for a sign... a look, a glance. Anything that'd give me hint of how she feels.

She didn't know then, what was wrong with me. There was no way for her to know why I was half mad, even I realized I'd sunk into an abyss of unreality, once she pulled me out. She couldn't know why I was so tortured then. She does now.

Buffy knows I have a soul. She told me she could see it when she looked into my eyes. I don't know whether I can believe that... since I have no reflection, I take her at her word.

If she can see my soul, why can't she see my bloody pain? If she sees it, how can she turn away? I'd never turn my back on her, no matter how badly she hurt me. I couldn't. I love her too bleedin' much.

__

How can you see into my eyes like open doors   
Leading you down into my core   


I thought I knew the pain I was in for when I asked for a soul. I thought I'd be able to handle it.

Couldn't have been more wrong, could I? Big git is what I am. For lovin' her. For thinkin' she could ever love me. What a bleedin' pouf I've become. Worse than my own grandsire.

Who'd have thought the big bad could fall so low?

Pain radiates from my eyes, permeates my skin. My love for Buffy is the flail I use to keep my guilt and remorse at bay... to batter it down into submission. For no pain is deeper or more penetrating than that of unrequited love. 

Buffy has the key to unlock the source of my pain. Her acceptance of my love would be enough. I hold no such hope she'd ever embrace my love fully, by returning it. Although she holds the only key, I have no expectation that she will ever use it.

__

Where I've become so numb without a soul 

My spirit sleeping somewhere cold   
Until you find it there and lead it back home   
  
It was when she rescued me from The First that I finally knew that she'd never leave me. Never push me completely out into the cold.

Buffy brought me home. She tended me.

I held onto her words to me when The First tried to break me. I heard Buffy telling me, "I believe in you Spike." That was what kept me going. Buffy's belief. Her faith... in me.

Finally, I'd become more than an evil soulless thing to her. I was real. I mattered.

__

(Wake me up)   
Wake me up inside   
(I can't wake up)   
Wake me up inside   
(Save me)   
Call my name and save me from the dark   


Being here with Buffy, knowing that she wants me to stay... is enough for me. That's what I keep telling myself. There are times I wish she needed me more, saw me as more than a tool to fight The First.

Then there are times, when I remember how shut out I felt last year. Buffy pushed me away. She told me that I was beneath her, after she screamed her release in my ears. Used me she did... and I let her. I had no will to say no, no soul to bemoan the pain she inflicted on us both. 

Now it's completely different.

Buffy trusts me. And that means the world to me. Because she is my world, more than the sun, moon and stars.

She is more than the sum of her parts. Buffy's blonde hair, green eyes and petite, sun bronzed glory is merely the framework for so much more. Her slayer strength and power are nothing to the light and love that radiates from her soul into those that she loves. Her family... now sadly reduced to Dawn and an absentee father. Her friends... Willow, Xander, even Anya and her former enemy Andrew. Her Watcher and surrogate father... Giles. And then there's me... running the gamut from enemy to reluctant ally, eager sex partner and finally now... what? Friend? Comrade in arms? I'm still not sure what I bleedin' mean to her.

__

(Wake me up)   
Bid my blood to run   
(I can't wake up)   
Before I come undone   
(Save me)   
Save me from the nothing I've become   
  
A cup of warmed blood offered from her sweet hand is like the nectar of the gods. But sharing a cuppa, especially one filled near the brim with hot chocolate and a bunch of those mini-marshmallows her mum always had in the house, is like a slice of pure, undiluted heaven. Or at least what I imagine heaven'd be like, since I never expected to have a chance of making it there after I was turned. Once I was sired and became a killer, heaven was the last place I gave a toss about. Until I met Buffy. And found heaven in her eyes.

Buffy sees beyond my past, to what I've become. But she doesn't see, or can't acknowledge my need and her own for something more. Something real... deep and true.

Sometimes I think I see it in her eyes. A glimmer, a flicker of recognition of just how far I've come. And I can almost feel her reaching her hand out to me, but when I look down I see both of her hands at her side and a question in her eyes.

Though I have no right to need more from Buffy, my heart continues to hold out hope that someday... somehow, she might actually love me. And finally pull me free of the quagmire of guilt and fear that keeps trying to suck me under. That might well succeed if not for her.

__

Now that I know what I'm without   
You can't just leave me   


I feel alive when I'm near Buffy. Like my heart might start to beat, my lungs might start to flex my ribcage as they fill with oxygen. But when Buffy leaves me alone, I feel cold. More desolate than I've ever felt. My melancholy is a deep well and I fear that I might sink into the sweet, dark miasma of despair that The First plumbed so expertly within me. I might sink under and drown before I even recognized the danger. So I stay as close to Buffy as she'll allow.

Buffy couldn't leave me to The First. She came for me. Even if it was only out of friendship or because of the soul.

__

Breathe into me and make me real   
Bring me to life   
  
It means somethin'. Means the bleedin' world to me.

Buffy's breath on my neck was a sweet balm to my battered soul. She lent me her strength when I had none left, gently threading her arm under my shoulder and 'round my back, to hold me up and help me out of the cave where The First held me chained and helpless.

Her words of faith in me shine like a spotlight deep inside, bathing the dark corners of my mind in a golden glow. Buffy brings me trembling to the brink of life.

I ache as I stare down at myself, teetering on the brink of humanity.

__

(Wake me up)   
Wake me up inside   
(I can't wake up)   
Wake me up inside   
(Save me)   
Call my name and save me from the dark 

A pair green eyes full of melting concern looked deep into my broken and battered soul. She saw something worth saving. Something worth holding onto.

When I hear Buffy call my name, her voice anchors me to the world. It shifts something inside, something aching and cold that suddenly lurches, warms and flows to sudden painful life. It is the birth of hope, every time her voice calls out to me.

She pushes the darkness away with her presence. When she takes my hand in hers, it is a gift... precious, unexpected and tender.

Her fingers are as strong as the rest of her, but her grip is gentle, firm yet restrained. When she gives my hand a sudden squeeze, I cannot help but look into Buffy's eyes to find her watching me. A sudden smile curves her cotton candy lips, prompting mine to reciprocate.

  
_(Wake me up)   
Bid my blood to run   
(I can't wake up)   
Before I come undone   
(Save me)   
Save me from the nothing I've become   
_

The sweet balm of my name on Buffy's tongue makes me shiver. It turns me from the past, to an uncertain future at Buffy's side.

If my undead heart could yet beat, it would pump faster at the sound of her voice, the tip tap of her high heeled boots on the linoleum. Stolen blood would pump through my veins, rushing to her call.

If my undead lungs still breathed, my breath would catch at the sight of Buffy's sharp, bright beauty. She's the knife that cuts through me. Silver bright, yet sharp and deadly.

Buffy and her fight fills me with a purpose... a desire to do good in her eyes and sometimes even in the eyes of her friends, cause I know how much she relies on them. Their opinion matters to her, so sometimes I find that it matters to me as well.

  
_Frozen inside without your touch _

Without your love darling only you   
Are the life among the dead   
  
I was as dead inside as my still vampire heart, before Buffy cared for me. 

Last year when Buffy couldn't decide what she wanted... what she needed from me, I ran hot and cold. But when she pushed me away, I found my heart encased in a block of ice that she cracked open and shattered each time she used me and denied my love for her. She left my heart bleeding on the ground after she ripped it out and shredded it.

The only way I could try and heal it was to let the ice reform around it again. Until she used a blow torch on it to burn me from the inside out.

Now she is gentle with me and it is almost more than I can stand. For I am defenseless against her care... her concern. It beats at me from her eyes. I don't want her pity.

I've come to believe that I matter to Buffy. My loss would hit her as hard as that of any of her other friends, maybe even as hard as the loss of the Bit would.

__

All this time I can't believe I couldn't see   
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me   


It took me months to break free of the pull, the hold that The First had on me. I was sucked down into a well of remorse, fearful no atonement could ever suffice. I crouched and hid in the basement of Sunnyhell High School, a huddled and broken figure. The weight of a century of ravages and rampages as a vampire was too much, until Buffy pulled me free of the suffocating darkness to shine her light on me. 

The First used Buffy's form to try and manipulate me, because she was my light in the darkness. 

Buffy was the one constant I never let go of, no matter how tangled my mind became.

Because Buffy is my heart. Without her... no, I don't want to think about bleedin' life without her, cause it wouldn't be life, it'd be soddin' hell.

__

I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems   
Got to open my eyes to everything   


My conscience was dead before I regained my soul. It took monumental effort for me to rein in the demon inside.

My soul sparked to life in fiery pain, one moment gone... the next regained.

That was almost poetic. Painfully poetic.

A soul, my soul brought me face to face with the glare of choices made without a care. Blood ran through my fingers as I drank down nameless, faceless victims bringing thoughtless ruin to so many innocent, unlucky souls.

__

Without a thought without a voice without a soul   
Don't let me die here   


The First Evil took on Buffy's form, but I saw it for a lie.

Buffy had told me too many times that she believed in me, her doppelganger had no power to break my faith in Buffy's words. I clung to Buffy's words like a lifeline.

The soul'd wrought a change in me... for the good. It bought me Buffy's faith, but more than that, it bought me a chance to really feel, like I hadn't since I was turned.. 

When I was tied over the Hellmouth by The First, in Buffy's guise, I could feel her bleed me with a knife she used to render arcane symbols in my flesh. Drops and streams of deepest garnet seeped from my flesh, splashing on the points that formed the manhole cover over the Hellmouth.

The First sought to strip my mind, my faith and belief in Buffy... so it could gnaw at my soul. I'd die before I let it strip away my soul, painful as it was.

__

There must be something more   
Bring me to life   


Nothing could make me give up on Buffy or give into The First. I believed Buffy would come for me. And I held hold onto that hope until I was ready to die. Didn't really matter much to me either way towards the end.

I just kept visualizing Buffy, walking in to find me, cutting my bonds to free me. When she finally came I wasn't sure if she was real or a mirage, until she touched me. Then I knew it was really Buffy. She'd come to rescue me from the pain.

Buffy set a spark to the soul inside me, making it sing.

  
_(Wake me up)   
Wake me up inside   
(I can't wake up)   
Wake me up inside   
(Save me)   
Call my name and save me from the dark   
_

Now I am in Buffy's life again. I'm in her home. She healed me from the inside out, with her belief... in me. Buffy looks into my eyes and sees a world I can't conceive, a future. She sees a soul worth saving, worth caring for. 

Buffy hears my soul crying in the wilderness, empty without her and she reaches out and takes my hand.

I walk at Buffy's side, roaming the cemeteries and other demon infested haunts that Sunnyhell is stuffed to the gills with. She looks over and sees me... knows me. Even smiles at me sometimes.

Buffy makes the dark recede. With her light, her touch.

__

(Wake me up)   
Bid my blood to run   
(I can't wake up)   
Before I come undone   
(Save me)   
Save me from the nothing I've become   
  
Hearing Buffy speak my name frees me from the past.

She is the one... the only one who can see through me and look at all of me without flinching.

Buffy knows the bad in me and accepts it, because she can feel the good in me too. Buffy can feel my soul, because it's for her. If not for her, I'd never have had the will to change.

She pulled me back from the brink... held onto me when I wasn't sure there was anything in me left worth holding onto.

__

(Bring me to life)   
I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside   
(Bring me to life) 

I know that I have so much already, it's bleedin' folly to hope for more.

But having a soul breeds hope. So hope is what I hold onto.

Is this soul purchased with blood and suffering good enough? Pure enough? I don't know. It seemed a fair bargain to me at the time.

Now I long for a look, a word, a touch that will tell me my hope is not misplaced. 

I will wait an eternity for one kiss from Buffy. I'll wait forever for her to tell me that she loves me as I love her. Because I will always love Buffy, whether or not she ever loves me back.

Until then, I wait. I walk at her side, striving to do my bloody best to protect her as she protects the world. Because Buffy is my shining star, a shaft of light in the darkness. She's the sum total of what makes my life worth living.

The End


End file.
